The 'Memoir Land Questionnaire'-Takers on NPR's and NYT's Notables Lists
With congratulations to Leslie Jamison, Sarah LaBrie, Lucas Mann, Lilly Dancyger, Lucy Sante, and Annabelle Tometich.
Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s a little roundup of Memoir Land Questionnaires by six memoirists on notable lists published by NPR and The New York Times. -Sari Botton
This week NPR and The New York Times released their lists of notable books published in 2024. I was thrilled to find six authors who have taken The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire on one list or the other—and in the case of
, both.Congratulations to
, , Lucas Mann, and Sarah Labrie, who appear on NPR’s list, and to Lucy Sante, , and Sarah Labrie, once again, who appear on the New York Times list!Below are links to their thoughtful questionnaires.
The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #6: Annabelle Tometich
This book started, more or less, as a mid-life crisis. In 2019, I got a job offer to be the restaurant critic at the Tampa Bay Times... I wanted so badly to accept it, but I couldn’t. My life and family and everything are here. When I turned it down, I spiraled. And then I thought: If you’re going to stay in your hometown, what can you do to grow yourself and your career? My answer, perhaps naively, was: Write a book!
The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #10: Lilly Dancyger
I feel like I truly became a writer through writing my first book, Negative Space. I had no idea what I was doing when I started writing that book, I just knew there were things swirling around in me that needed to come out and onto the page. The writing of that book took me over a decade, because I had to learn the fundamentals—to learn the “rules” of memoir, and to learn what interesting ways other writers had found to break those rules, and to find my place in that constellation.
The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #11: Lucas Mann
I am 37, and I’ve been writing, or taking the possibility of myself writing seriously, since I was 20. I’d always been told I was good at it, always loved reading and writing, though perhaps that was because I’d been told it was a place where I excelled, but never committed in any way until my junior year of college, when I was lucky enough to end up in classes taught by the incredible writers Amitava Kumar and Kiese Laymon.
The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #49: Sarah LaBrie
No One Gets to Fall Apart opens with my mother, a nurse, in the midst of a psychotic break, parked on the Houston freeway, screaming. At the time, we lived in different states and weren’t speaking. I wrote this book to figure out how we got to that point. It’s about ambition and heritable mental illness and how it manifests across generations.
The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #9: Lucy Sante
My books are nonfiction and seemingly diverse, but they all have deep personal significance and none was a job of work. I've written about the places in my life: Low Life (about New York City), The Factory of Facts (about my Belgian birthplace), The Other Paris, and Nineteen Reservoirs (about the Catskills)…I Heard Her Call My Name is actually my second memoir, after The Factory of Facts.
The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #3: Leslie Jamison
Splinters tells the story of the birth of my daughter and the end of my marriage, these simultaneous experiences twined like a double helix plotline through the book. It illuminates my consuming love for my daughter, and the rupture of my marriage falling apart, examining what it means for a woman to be many things at once: a mother, an artist, a teacher, a lover.
Fun to read this and write down authors/titles I'll now order from our library. Don't know if anyone else does this, but my husband and I read the same books and then talk about them over morning espresso. I call it the Kirie/Mark Book Club. We actually discuss deep aspects of the books, and I'll wager it keeps me falling in love with my husband of 25 years.
What a stunning round-up. Sari. It feels as if it took you years to gather this information in a way that we can just ... read and enjoy. Thank you!